Saturday, August 23, 2008

Chaos Reigns Over Our Broken Democracy

So John McCain doesn’t know how many houses he owns. Let me be the first liberal to offer this response: Who gives a donkey’s monkey?

You heard right, folks. I wouldn’t vote for McCain at gunpoint, but his response to this question does not bother me.

If you and your spouse took in almost $6 million a year, how long do you think it would take before you didn’t know how many houses you owned?

It’s called investing in real estate, people. And it’s a smart move, especially right now, and it’s even smarter if you pay someone else to handle your investments. No wonder McCain doesn’t know how many houses he owns.

It would be like asking me how many dinner plates are in the kitchen cabinet. My wife cares about that stuff; I just wash them.

Obama, who previously cast himself as a transcendent figure who would not lower himself to the filthy, immature squabbling of superficial “politics as usual,” lost my respect by jumping all over McCain for being “out of touch with ordinary Americans.”

I don’t know how many times I have to say it. As a certified Ordinary American, I don’t want the President of the United States to be like me.

I want the President to be brilliant, like a five-time Jeopardy champion, but also to have absurd amounts of courage, like an amateur kick boxer with engorged testicles.

And he should also have an advanced soul, like Ghandi; the type of person who is not attached to material possessions, and therefore doesn’t bother to count his money, his houses, or his menservants, because he is too busy correcting injustices and stuff like that.

In short, the less like me, the better.

Just when I was getting over this foolishness, I found out that conservative saboteurs have been all over Fox News and the Internet claiming that Barack Obama’s birth certificate is fake, and he wasn’t actually born a U.S. Citizen, which would make him ineligible to become President.

Yet another example of how modern journalism has become less concerned with facts than with raising a ruckus.

The Annenberg Foundation, a non-partisan media watchdog, got their hands on the actual birth certificate from the State of Hawaii (via some cloak-and-dagger nighttime raid?) and declared that it has all of the features required by the U.S. State Department to prove citizenship, including a raised seal, verifiable signature, and giant white-out stain.

The Annenberg people took close-up photos of the birth certificate and posted the on their website, www.factcheck.org, along with a borrowed image of a birth announcement from the Honolulu Advertiser from August of 1961, and video from a time travel expedition to Mrs. Obama’s hospital room for a live interview during the birth.

It still may not be enough to quell the conspiracy theorists.

At this point I’m just disgusted with the whole process. So my vote is going to the only candidate who suggested after Hurricane Katrina that federal officials should be arrested for negligent homicide, and who berated the Pentagon for pouring money into companies that support human trafficking and sex slavery.

That would be Cynthia McKinney of the Green Party.

I don’t expect her to win, of course, but we need strong third parties around to remind us that there are… you know… issues.

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About Me

I am a high school teacher-freelance writer-dance instructor. My favorite snack is frozen raspberries. I spend my free time with my wife and daughter and sometimes I furtively admire my collection of obscure cardboard boxes.
Email me at chuckrates@gmail.com.